Reiko Ishida

Name: Reiko Ishida

Gender: Female

Age: 18

Grade: 12

School: Bayview Secondary School

Hobbies and Interests: Figure Skating, Roller Blading, Mountain Biking, Hockey(watching, not playing)

Appearance: Reiko is short enough to be legally classified has being a dwarf. She stands at 4'9", one inch below the legal classification. She has a darker complexion due to the amount of time she spends outdoors, but during winter time she becomes almost as pale as her sister. She is of Japanese heritage, and has black hair that has grown out slightly from it's previously shortened state, now reaching about halfway down her ear and often spiked. Reiko is fairly skinny, and her hobbies have made her very fit, with very little fat. She wears purple framed glasses, although she can see well enough without them. She keeps her nails short and well taken care of, and are often coloured either purple, red, or both. On the day of the trip, Reiko was wearing a red sleeveless T-shirt, black cargo pants with a chain that attached on one end to a belt loop, and on the other end her wallet, and hiking boots. Recently, she has had the left side of her bottom lip pierced three times. As always, she wore her red and purple biking gloves, and brought her roller blades along as well.

Biography: Reiko was born a twin, younger by 20 minutes, in St. Paul, Minnesota, where she was born and raised. Her parents had been living there for about 10 years before the sisters Reika and Reiko were born. They were born under unusual circumstances, being mirror image twins. This is basically a type of identical twin, where everything about the twins is as if looking in a mirror. Reiko is often called by her friends and family the "left side twin", in that all of her defining traits are on the left side. She is left handed, and all defining features she shares with her sister are on the left side. She would have no other siblings.

Reiko's childhood was rather uneventful. Despite being twins, Reika and Reiko weren't as close as many thought they would be. As infants, their parents did what any parent would do, and dressed them up identically, but when they were old enough, about 6, they allowed them to choose their own clothing. Reiko choose a brightly coloured wardrobe, wanting to stand out and be different from her twin. She was also given a chance to choose a recreational activity to do after school. Her family wasn't rich, but they had enough to spare. Reiko, who had always been a very active individual, chose figure skating.

Reiko would become rather good at figure skating, winning local competitions and other small things. At the age of 16, she gained a bit of notoriety after winning a state competition, the first in her age group to win it from her city in over 10 years. She would go on compete in a national competition shortly afterward, where she would place 3rd overall.

Reiko would return to school upon returning from the competition and be hailed as a hero for placing so well in the competition. From that point she gained a bit of a celebrity status in her school and the surrounding area, and would even assemble an "entourage", the nickname her group of friends were given. During the off-season, Reiko would keep in shape by roller blading, as well as gathering some of her friends and taking their bikes out into the local woods on weekends. Her entourage were friendly with Reiko's sister, but so were most of the students in the school. Her parents, proud of her success, allowed her to ask for one thing of her choosing, and they would get it for her. This would end up being her custom made gloves. What many people don't know about these gloves, as they only see the outside, is that she had her name printed on the inside of the left glove, while her sister's name is in the right.

School wise, she wasn't very smart. She did well enough, usually getting low to mid 70s in most of her classes, although she excelled in gym, often getting 95% or more. After being so successful in figure skating, she naturally wishes to turn pro once she graduates, and already has many agents interested in her.

Reiko, like her sister Reika, attracts people very easy. However, where as Reika does it through empathy and understanding, Reiko's is more on reputation. Admittedly many of her entourage only hang around with her because they want a moment in the limelight, although a few of them are genuine friends. Reiko is friendly, but can often be intimidating, and obviously not due to her size. She has an air of importance around her, and many feel that she looks down on everyone around her. She is the leader of her group of friends, and isn't afraid to wield this power on occasion.

Advantages: Reiko's advantages are pretty much entirely physical.She is a quick on her feet, has a near perfect sense of balance, and is flexible almost to the point of contortionism. Her figure skating has given a high endurance as well, as practices could often last for hours with only small breaks.

Disadvantages: Reiko has very few true friends, as many hang with her simply to be associated with her, and can just as easily drive people away. She isn't very good at reading people, and thus doesn't realize many of her friends aren't really friends. If one was smart enough, it could potentially be easy to twist Reiko into doing things she wouldn't do on her own will.

Designated Number: Female student no. 13

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Designated Weapon: Pair of Sais

Conclusion: Aw, look at the little (literally) celebrity... maybe she should ask a certain Mr. Crosby how far fame gets you in this game. Oh well, the Japanese are all ninjas or something, right? She should be able to put those Sais to good use.

'The above biography is as written by rocky2010. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made.'

Evaluations
Handled by: Rocky

Kills: Sally Connelly, Cyrille LaBlanche, Tobias Elwin, Raina Morales, Rizzo Vitoria, Carol Burke, Jimmy Robertson, Joe Rios, Ericka Bradley

Killed By: Ilario Fiametta III

Collected Weapons: Sais x 2 (assigned weapon, both discarded (1x to Garry Villette)), SIG-Sauer P220( from Kris Hartmann, discarded), Mossberg 500 Cruiser( from Carol Burke, to Courtney Elizabeth Bradley), Heckler & Koch PSG-1 Semi-automatic Sniper Rifle (from Hui "Sarah" Xu, discarded), Wooden Nail Board (from Bridget Connolly), Sigma 40P (from Alice Boucher), MP40 Submachine Gun (from Alice Boucher)

Allies: Sarah Xu, Simon Grey, Carol Burke, Bridget Connolly, Kimberly Nguyen

Enemies: Sally Connelly, Cyrille LaBlanche, Tobias Elwin, Maxwell Lombardi, Kris Hartmann, Etain Brennan, Carol Burke, Ericka Bradley, Ilario Fiametta III

Mid-game Evaluation:

Post-Game Evaluation:

Memorable Quotes:

Other/Trivia

 * In a thread titled The Hardest Part it was revealed that Reiko's parents are named Kaori and Tsuyoshi
 * The conclusion of Reiko's profile references V1 contestant Sidney Crosby. Ironically, Reiko's final placing of fourth is the same position Sidney finished in his respective season.

Threads
Below is a list of threads that contain Reiko, in chronological order.

The Past:
 * The One With The New Kid

Pregame:
 * Small Person Collider
 * My Mild Traumatic Brain Injury
 * Sanctuary
 * Burger Time
 * Promase
 * The Dance Must Go On!
 * Disaccharide

V4:
 * Wake Me Up...
 * The Right Thing for the Wrong Reasons
 * Out Of The Darkness And Into The Light
 * It's A New Day
 * Walk the Line
 * Lean On Me
 * Thank You For Being A Friend
 * The Hardest Part
 * Darken Your Clothes and Strike a Violent Pose
 * Suum Venite Faciamus Latere
 * The Kindness of Strangers
 * Some People Care
 * Revolution
 * The Cavalry Arrives
 * Oxidation
 * Coming Home
 * Refraction
 * Out of Sight, Out of Mind
 * Reflection
 * Serendipity
 * Camping Out
 * We Can Live with the Sadness
 * Everybody Loses (V4 Endgame)

Your Thoughts
''Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Reiko Ishida. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here!''


 * Stopped being a character a while ago and just started being an angry ball of death who fails to even garner a bit of interest. Behind two or three others, among the worst characters in v4. Rocky CANNOT write a good villain for the death of him. - Anonymous


 * I've mulled this one over a lot, at pretty great length. Rocky's often mentioned wanting more  perspectives on Reiko/clear reasons folks had problems with her, so that's the perspective I'm going to approach this one from. I think, to start with, a look at pregame is necessary. Reiko was one of the most pregamed characters, especially for the short time she was around. In that space, readers got used to who Reiko was, how she acted, what motivated her, etc. She got a lot of attention, and so most handlers were pretty familiar with her.

Then, when the game started, there was a change in how Reiko was presented. Right away, her narrative pulled back out of her head, presenting actions and occasional thoughts but little more. A more minimal approach can work well (check out Bryan Calvert for an example of that), but the problem was that, for Reiko, it wasn't consistent. She started as a character whose head readers were inside, and by pulling back at the same time she underwent a very drastic change in motivation and style of action, it threw a lot of readers off. It especially didn't help because Reiko would sometimes have thoughts about how she liked killing and such. She started killing too early, I think, for sympathetic motivations to be ascribed to it, especially since she often was guilty of disproportionate retribution.

So, at the start of the game, Reiko slid into being a fairly standard player, motivated largely by shaky justifications and an unhealthy taste for violence. She took insults poorly, overreacted, etc. At this point, she was very much in with the pack of other early game killers, like Clio and Maxwell, all of whom attracted fairly negative attention because their motivations just weren't that developed. Unlike them, though, Reiko had an attempted redemption arc, and I think that's largely what set people off.

Basically, the problem with Reiko's redemption is that it doesn't really logically flow from anything she's done or anything that's happened to her, and she doesn't do anything to earn it. She decides to be a better person, and her narrative starts treating her like one, but she's still exactly as suspicious and twitchy and violent as ever, she just doesn't come off as enjoying it as much. I feel like, for a redemption arc to work, a character must be self aware and must make sacrifices. Reiko fit neither. She felt a little bad about what had happened, but mostly tried to put it behind her. She also continued to react with violence when threatened, seemingly unaware of the fact that, due to her own actions she'd made herself a huge threat to everyone. She didn't try to defuse situations, and she killed when it was the easier choice.

Reiko was also let off very easily by her girlfriend and the girl whose best friend she killed. Unfortunately, rather than making her more sympathetic, it just showed that she could care about people close to her, without caring much about the rest. The worst she faced in terms of consequences was being turned away from the rescue, which was purely an external thing.

Now, I am not at all opposed to amoral characters, or to hypocritical characters. They make for really fascinating reading a lot of the time, but it's really important for their narratives to be aware of these issues. Reiko's seemed to think she was the protagonist, and she just never did anything to earn that distinction. Abstaining from bad behavior is not the same as engaging in good behavior, especially when the bad stuff still rears its head a lot of the time and there's a big history of it without much regret shown. Again, this is a place where things could've maybe been sold if we'd had access to way more of Reiko's thoughts, but I don't think even that would've carried it because her motivations were, at their core, selfish. She did what she did for people she cared about, because she cared about them, but she was unable to empathize enough to realize that many of her foes were doing the exact same thing.

So, the big flaws with Reiko, I think, are that she was a character whose pregame set up an expectation of understanding that went unfulfilled in V4 proper, and whose motivations never made it to heroic, or even beyond selfish, but whose narrative seemed to think she was in the right. She was framed as a misunderstood protagonist rather than a somewhat tragic villain, which I think would have fit her a lot more. Her attempts at change were so perfunctory or internal that it never really felt like more than a thing to make her feel better, and her inability to really deal with doing bad things is part of why she did them in the first place. This, combined with a concept that was pretty out there even for V4, made Reiko a character who demanded the spotlight and drew tons of attention, but who didn't really thrive when examined under a close lens. - MurderWeasel